


Sickly Sweet

by Misskiku



Category: Rune Factory 4
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:01:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23033641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misskiku/pseuds/Misskiku
Summary: Valentine's Day comes around and Dylas can't stand sweets. Misunderstandings and fluff follows.
Relationships: Dylas/Frey (Rune Factory)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 77





	Sickly Sweet

Valentine's Day meant nothing to Dylas. Nothing more than overexcited women, a day full of sweets and sugar. 

At least, that's all it had meant to Dylas until a certain someone had wormed their way into his heart. Instead of seeking out solitude, a quiet place to fish and pass the time, Dylas found himself pacing. Shifting between fishing spots in town. Ears perked and craning and twitching to catch a hint of her voice. A trickle of heat not from the glaring sun curled hotly on his cheeks. Not for the first time that day, a fish scurried off with his bait. 

He'd caught no more than a glimpse of Frey the entire morning and his body was already aflame. 

Not that he was expecting anything. 

Definitely not anything from her. 

The first Valentine's Day Dylas had spent in Selphia had been inconsequential and quickly forgotten. A day of festivities and excitement he had passed up for quiet, serene solitude. Things had changed much over the span of a year. 

The energetic girl who'd refused to leave him alone had now become an irreplaceable figure in his life. A friend. Someone he trusted. Someone who would smile at him without a second thought, who wouldn't judge him for his scars, his wounds, his past. Someone who had taken his heart long ago. 

Dylas was busy trying to push those thoughts from his mind, trying to hook another portion of bait onto his line, when movement caught his eyes. His heart skipped. The bait slipped from his fingers, plinking into the crystal clear water and disappearing with a flurry of fish and ripples. He froze, halfway between crouching and standing. Frey smiled at him, carrying a handful of cookies wrapped in a fancy, semi-opaque cloth and tied with a neat bow. 

Valentine's Day cookies. 

"Hey, Dylas!" Frey greeted him, his heart singing with delight at the soft cadence of her voice. "Caught anything?" 

"N-Not yet." He stole his eyes away from her dazzling smile before it rendered him completely and utterly speechless. She stole the wind from his sails with a simple smile. His heart flopping as though she'd knocked his feet out from under him, as though she'd reeled him in like a fish, leaving him out to dry on the hard ground. Unable to think or breathe. Baking in the warmth of her smile. 

"That's unusual," she noted with an adorable tilt of her head. "Maybe the fish are a bit spooked for some reason?" 

Spooked from the scowl he'd worn earlier in an attempt to focus on anything else but her distance laughter. 

"Maybe…" 

Treacherous heat burned his cheeks. He glanced at her again, at the cookies in her hand, and his stomach churned involuntarily. Sweets. The one thing he couldn't handle. He swallowed thickly, tasting acidic bile in the back of his throat. 

Frey curled the cookies into her hands, holding them behind her quickly. Took a sharp step back. "Oh, well that's… a shame…" 

Her smile was gone. A flash of panic, a flicker of emotions Dylas couldn't read washing over her face as she straightened. She didn't meet his eyes. 

"Anyway, I've got to go. See you later!" Frey said hurriedly. She dashed away before Dylas could respond, before he could read any further into the hard line of her jaw or the tremble of her hands. 

She was gone, leaving Dylas' heart to drop into his stomach. 

The cookies weren't for him. 

-

Dylas caught nothing the whole day. His mind wandered and wandered, running off without him as he spent the whole day at a secluded lake, his line dangling absently in the water long after the bait had been nibbled off. His heavy, dejected sighs filled the silence. Mortified grunts at how stupidly hopeful he had been. A heavy weight settled on his shoulders, his heart, making it difficult to move and impossible to care. 

He trudged back to town later in the evening. He turned to head back home when he stared straight at the castle, his mind filling with her. A painful vice clamped his heart and Dylas whirled and trudged towards the lake instead. His legs powered him onward with long, quick strides, blocking out the murmurings of excitement in the air around him with a scowl. 

The silence around the lake wrapped him in a cold blanket of fresh air. Dylas breathed a harsh sigh, seeking a spot on the lake shore to settle down, when a quiet, fractured sob met his ears. He startled, snapping his attention to a figure curled up on the ground in the shade beneath a tree. Legs drawn up to their chest, head buried in their knees. Long hair pouring down their back in delicate pigtails. 

Frey. 

It was Frey, her body curled into itself, small and fragile and tight. Her shoulders quivered with almost silent sobs, stolen gasps that filtered through the quiet evening air. A handful of broken cookies lay in the dirt beside her. 

The fishing rod dropped from Dylas' fingers. He moved before he could think, before the next heavy beat of his heart, and was by her side in an instant. She flinched at the sound of his footsteps crunching in the sand. Didn't raise her head. Her arms drew tighter around her legs and Dylas stilled, his hand hovering inches from her shoulder as he knelt beside her. 

"Frey…?" 

Slowly, she lifted her head from her knees at his voice, her eyes wet with tears, swollen and red. The skin on her knees was raw and darkened with dirt. She dusted the sand, the flakes of dirt and dried blood off her knees as if Dylas wasn't there. She gazed off ahead of them, vacant and impassive. A shadow over her eyes. 

Dylas' heart sunk. He looked at the fractured cookies in the sand, the crumbled cloth and ribbon discarded beside them. 

She'd been rejected. 

"I'm… sorry…" Dylas said quietly. Swallowed tightly when she flinched again, forcing down the lump in his throat. "I don't know what to say in circumstances like this but… whoever it was, they made a mistake in hurting you like this." 

Frey turned her head to face him, her cheek resting on her knees. A question, confusion, washed over her eyes. 

Dylas' cheeks burned hotly under her inquisitive gaze. "Y-You were rejected, right…? Someone didn't accept your cookies… that- that can't be easy to deal with." 

She blinked at him, the remains of her tears fading. 

"I'm sure there's other people who would accept your cookies," Dylas continued, the words pouring out like water from a broken dam. "Other people who… who care about you as well…" 

Frey straightened. Dylas' breath caught sharply in his throat. He stared down at the cookies, unable to meet her eyes. 

"Dylas… you were the one who rejected my cookies, though." 

Dylas gawked at her. Mouth dropping open in a thunderclap of confusion. "What?" 

She frowned, mirroring his confusion. "They were for you. I was going to give them to you but…" She glanced away. "You looked so disgusted when you saw them, I couldn't…" 

"They were… for me…?" He couldn't breathe. Couldn't speak with his heart jammed high in his throat, a surge of heat shooting through his veins as his mind whirled. 

Frey nodded slowly. His gaze fell to the broken cookies. Discarded and soiled. Dylas grabbed a fragment of a cookie and shoved it in his mouth without a thought. 

"Wait, Dylas!" Frey cried. "Th-That's been on the ground!" 

He winced at the crunch of sand, the sickly sweet buttery cookie melting on his tongue with the taste of dirt. He smouldered in suffocating heat, covering his mouth with the back of his hand as he chewed and crunched through the cookie. She watched him with wide eyes. 

Dylas swallowed forcibly. "It's… not bad. Pretty good, actually, when you get past the layer of sand." 

Frey's mouth twitched in a sympathetic, yet confused, smile. "You didn't have to eat it…" 

"You… you said it was for me. So…." 

She nodded. "I thought you didn't want them. The way you looked at them earlier… I thought you were disgusted at the thought of receiving cookies from me…" 

"What?! No, I would never-! I… I would be…" He couldn't meet her eyes. Struggled to hold her gaze, his eyes flicking back and forth between her and the lake, the trees, the darkening sky. "I would be… happy to receive cookies from you…" 

"Then why did you look so grossed out this morning?" 

Dylas swallowed again, trying to remove the last grains of sand off his teeth and tongue. "I… don't like sweet things. I can't stand anything sweet like that." 

"Oh, but you just…?" She motioned to the cookies, raising an eyebrow. 

"Th-That was because you made them for me! I wasn't going to reject anything from you…" 

"Oh." 

Dylas couldn't breathe as a warm silence descended over them. His chest felt too tight. His lungs, his heart, fluttering with dizzying heat as his mind scrambled for something to say. 

"Can I try again?" Frey said finally, breaking the silence. "If it's alright with it being a day late…?" 

Dylas looked at her, took in the gentle, bashful smile she gave him. "What…?" 

"Let me try again. I'll change up the recipe, make it less sweet for you. If you'll accept it?" 

"Y-Yeah." Dylas nodded slowly, stiffly. Unable to think past the disbelief that this was actually happening. 

"I know cookies are the tradition here but… how about a carrot cake? Would that be alright?" 

He nodded again. Speechless and breathless. Warm despite the cool breeze coasting by. Her smile was warm like the sun. 

Frey collected the broken cookies into the cloth, scrunching it up in her hand. "Then, I'll come by the restaurant after closing. I'm sure to have perfected it by then!" 

"O-Okay." He stood when she did, his lungs emptying as she smiled. 

Perhaps Valentine's Day wasn't too bad after all.


End file.
